The Information Processing Techniques Office and the Birth of the Internet A Study in Governance by Ronda Hauben

rh120@columbia.edu

Draft for Comment

"On closer investigation we found that there is indeed a certain underlying similarity between the governing or self-governing of ships or machines and the governing of human organizations."

Karl Deutsch, Nerves of Government The importance of feedback lies in the fact that systems which possess it have certain properties....Systems with feedback cannot adequately be treated as if they were of one-way action for the feedback introduces properties which can be explained only by reference to the properties of the particular feedback.

W. Ross Ashby, Design for a Brain

The nature, degree and polarity of the feedback has a decisive effect on the stability or instability of a system.

W. Ross Ashby, Ibid.

ABSTRACT

In both "Man-Computer Symbiosis"(1960) by JCR Licklider, and "On-Line Man-Computer Communication"(1962) by Licklider and Wenden E. Clark, there is the notion of the capability of the human mind to do aspects of problem solving and decision making that were not then, and are not yet within the capability of the computer. In "Man-Computer Symbiosis", Licklider characterizes the human as goal seeking. In his paper with Clark, they refer to the need for "a tight on-line coupling between human brains and electronic computers." Their objective is to "amalgamate the predominantly human capabilities and the predominantly computer capabilities to create an integrated system for goal-oriented on-line-inventive information processing." Understanding why and how Licklider and then Licklider and Clark use terms like “goal seeking” or “goal-oriented” is crucial to any understanding of the nature of the computer and networking developments that Licklider initiated during his leadership of the Information Processing Techniques Office at ARPA. In 1962 Licklider was invited to ARPA to create the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO). Describing the (IPTO)in a study done by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Science, the authors of the study write: The entire system displayed something of a self-organizing, self-managing system. This paper will explore how IPTO displayed something of a "self-organizing" and "self-managing" nature. It will examine the

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connection between this description of IPTO and the concepts of “feedback” and “servo-mechanisms” that were being studied in the early post WWII period by the research communities that Licklider was connected with before he joined ARPA to create the IPTO. By examining this connection, a basis will be set to understand the context both of Licklider’s early writing and of the foundation he set for the creation and development of IPTO as the birthplace that made possible the development of the Internet.

-------------------------------I - WHAT'S PAST AS PROLOGUE

Let us recall that our word 'government' comes from a Greek root that refers to the art of the steersman.

The same underlying concept is reflected in the double meaning of the modern word 'governor' as a person charged with the administrative control of a political unit, and as a mechanical device controlling the performance of a steam engine or an automobile. Karl Deutch, Nerves of Government pg 182

The system is at once a store, a processor, a transmitter of information: the central nervous system of the community (unlike the central nervous system known in biology, however, the information system of the local university community is a node in a larger network that serves the complex of communities and organizations that support the intellectual life of the society.)

F.J. Carl Overhage and R. Joyce Harmon, "INDREX"

In steering a ship, information about its current direction and environment are used to keep it on course. This process requires both skill in utilizing information from its past performance to make any needed adjustments in its present course and skill in setting a direction forward toward the ship's destination. The concept of feedback involves using information from its past performance toward setting a future direction. The ability to utilize feedback to steer toward a fixed or even a changing goal is a high order capability which is at the crux of the ability to create a “self-organizing” or “self- managing” system. The Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) was created at the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in the US Department of Defense (DOD) in 1962 and ended in 1986. Much like a captain with the ability to utilize feedback to help in the steering of a ship, the IPTO functioned to utilize information from its previous performance to provide direction and governance as part of the ARPA/IPTO community.

The IPTO and the community it supported, have contributed many important new forms of computer technology, such as interactive computing, interactive graphics, packet switching networking technology, protocols like TCP/IP, and other important developments like VLSI chip technology. But perhaps one of the most overlooked contributions was the creation of the administrative form which could provide the appropriate form of governance for the ARPA/IPTO research community. By exploring the nature of this governance it will be possible to understand how this

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government office and its academic research community could achieve such outstanding technical developments.

An important aspect was the development and use of new means of communication like computer networking which made possible email and mailing lists. Such means of communication helped those in the community to identify difficult problems and to collaborate to solve them. Equally important was the IPTO process of encouraging collaborative technical research. Researchers were able to develop new forms of computing and networking which were tested as they were used by the research community itself. Based on the feedback, further development was carried on. Using feedback as an integral part of the invention process created the ability to adapt to a dynamic environment.

The IPTO research community was able to build on work done by an earlier community of researchers from the early post WWII period who studied information processing in natural and artificial systems. This earlier interdisciplinary community of researchers included those studying the brain and its information processing structures and functions, and those developing and studying how machinery can utilize feedback to support automatic control functions. JCR Licklider was an important link between this earlier community and the IPTO community.

Licklider, was a neurophysiologist who had made pioneering use of computers to develop dynamic models of the brain. Also Licklider recognized the advantage that could be achieved by coupling the human and the computer so that they could solve problems that neither could solve independently. In March 1960, Licklider published an article describing the nature and benefits of a human-computer partnership. Building on the work of an earlier community of researchers in biological and machine systems, Lickider proposed the need to recognize the unique capability of both the human and the computer for the partnership to be fruitful. His article "Man-Computer Symbiosis" included a program for the development of computer technology which would make it possible for humans to interact with computers in ways not previously possible.

In 1962, Dr. Jack Ruina, head of ARPA, invited Licklider to create the Information Processing Techniques Office. Licklider created the office and then provided leadership for a community of researchers and set a pattern of governance of the research community that was continued by a number of the subsequent directors of IPTO. By the early 1970's, the IPTO research environment provided for the birthplace and early nurturing of the Internet.

In their study, Funding a Revolution, the National Research Council(NRC) describe the IPTO. They write (1999, 105):

The entire system displayed something of a self-organizing, self-managing nature. `

The NRC study does not explain the mechanisms of the self-organizing, self-managing nature of IPTO. There is a need to explore these mechanisms. IPTO not only made an important contribution to the

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computer technology used today, but it also provides the basis to understand how such an institution, how such a self-organizing, self-managing organizational form could be created inside of the U.S. government. The creation and development of the Internet is one of the important achievements made possible by the method of government institution.

II - INTRODUCTION

The research for this paper began with the question of what hasbeen the government role in the development of the Internet. When beginning this research, I did not realize that I would come upon an interesting anomaly. This was that indeed there had been a government role but this role was intimately tied up with the concept of governance.

Talking to people not involved with the ARPA/IPTO community about the role of government in the creation of the Internet, I was often told that all the government had done was to fund Internet research. That the research was done by academics at universities and that there was essentially no government role outside of government being the “sugar daddy” for academic researchers.

In 1997, the U.S. government raised the question of how to form an institutional form for the administration, control and scaling of the vital functions of the Internet's infrastructure. This made it even more urgent to know the actual forms of previous government involvement. The question was raised: What kind of institutional arrangement made it possible to create the Internet? Fortunately there are a series of interviews with some of those who had been part of IPTO, where the Internet was conceived and nurtured. These interviews help to shed important light on the nature of the governance that prevailed previous to and at the conception of the Internet. Also there are technical articles written by a number of the pioneers involved in this office.

Reading these interviews and the related technical articles reveals some of the details of a government research institution that was created and functioned in a way little understood by those outside of it, but which set an important empirical foundation for the needed institutional support for outstanding technical and scientific achievements.

To understand the essential nature of this institution, one must be willing to examine and study the details of its development. One must also find a way to probe to the essential core, the nugget of this development. This includes having some understanding of the intellectual and scientific foundations that gave birth to the IPTO and to the roots for the Internet. This paper and subsequent papers will explore the creation and development of the IPTO and of the Internet in the context of the intellectual and scientific concepts that provided its nurturing soil. -----------------------------------------------------------

III - THE NATURE OF GOVERNANCE AS STEERING

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Steering a ship implies guiding the future behavior of the ship on the basis of information concerning the past performance and present position of the ship itself in relation to some external course, goal or target. In such cases, the next step in the behavior of the system must be guided in part by information concerning its own performance in the past....In both of them, their performed action on the outer world and not merely their intended action is reported back, to the central regulating apparatus.

Karl Deutsch, pg 182-183

In his book Nerves of Government, political scientist Karl Deutsch proposes a point of view that will be helpful in understanding the nature of government. He maintains that rather than concern oneself with the issue of political power, it will be valuable to take an operational perspective and consider the nature of how communication and decision-making are carried on by those in government. He writes Deutsch, pg ix):

All that is offered here...is a point of view....[which] concerns itself less with the bones or muscles of the body politic than with its nerves -- its channels of communication and decision.....[I]t might be profitable to look upon government somewhat less as a problem of power and somewhat more as a problem of steering, and...to show that steering is decisively a matter of communication.

Influenced by the feedback model of analysis used by engineers and biologists in the post WWII period, Deutsch proposes that this model can be helpful also in understanding the role and processes of government. This mode of analysis came to be known by various terms such as “goal seeking”, “feedback”, or “cybernetics”, and later as “general system analysis”. Deutsch argues (Deutsch, pg 77-78):

Cybernetics suggests that steering or governing is one of the most interesting and significant processes in the world and that a study of steering in self-steering machines, in biological organisms, in human minds, and in societies will increase our understanding of problems in all these fields. Deutsch is interested in the channels of internal communication in

a social organization or institution. The model he develops provides a helpful perspective for investigating the development of the IPTO. He emphasizes understanding the internal channels of communication flow in a system as well as how the control mechanisms function. Are these internal channels and control mechanisms able to provide direction, growth and learning to the organization or institution? Or is the system left to drift in response to the pressures of time or the environment? Deutsch believes that it is possible to identify what the internal communication channels are and whether they provide a way to utilize information from the environment and from previous experience to adjust effectively to the ever changing demands of the external environment. Deutsch also explains the importance of what he calls the "flow chart of information" (Deutsch, pg 130). There are three kinds of information needed by a self steering system. These include (Deutsch, pg 129):

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(F)irst, information about the world outside; second, information from the past, with a wide range of recall and recombination; and third, information about itself and its parts.

Deutsch suggests that if the flow of information in any of these three areas is interrupted over a period of time, the system will lose control over its behavior. To begin with, this will affect the behavior at the extremities of the system, but ultimately at the core of the system itself. Along with these scenarios of how a system can become dysfunctional, Deutsch considers how a system can adjust successfully to its changing environment. The continuing means of adjustment is through feedback and control mechanisms. He also explores how learning and adaptation of behavior can be made possible through the internal rearrangement or internal restructuring of the system.

Such a model provides a useful framework to examine the birth, development, and then end of IPTO. The focus is on identifying the internal channels for the flow of information and on exploring the possible existence and nature of the control mechanism for a feedback system. Essential aspects of a functioning feedback system include whether or not grassroots criticism is encouraged and whether or not the system is responsive to such input. Deutsch writes (Deutsch, pg 243)

We may ask: What are the facilities and rewards for the encouragement of criticism, its transmission to decision points and for responsiveness of the system to it[....]? What is the status of any practice or institution designed to treat the social and physical environment of the system not merely as a source of either obstacles or tools, but as a potential source of challenges, guidance and vital information?

What are the instances of integrative behavior on the part of the system observed in the past and what are the prospects and instrumentalities for such behavior in the future?

Another important aspect of the study will be whether there is a goal that is identified and how a feedback process helps to provide the means of attaining the goal.(Rosenblueth, Wiener and Bigelow, “Behavior, Purpose and Teleology”, pg 19)

To help to understand his feedback model Deutsch compares it with an equilibrium model. Deutsch shows how an equilibrium model does not provide for growth or adjustment to a changing environment.An equilibrium model, he writes, considers disturbances as temporary and external. Such a model is based on "a restricted part of dynamics...[on] the description of steady states." (Deutsch, pg 90) Feedback analysis, on the contrary, expects disturbances and provides for internal and external changes and adjustments when needed. It is "the study of the full dynamics of a system under a statistically varying input." (Deutsch, pg 90) A well designed feedback system allows adjustments to diminish mistakes. (Deutsch, pg 89) A feedback system is a goal-seeking system, but the goal can be a changing goal. Deutsch describes how the goal is external in feedback analysis, while in equilibrium analysis it is inside the system. A second distinction is that in feedback analysis, the system relies on a steady flow of information from its environment which is compared to the constant flow of information about its

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performance, while in equilibrium analysis the object is to restore the equilibrium, when it is upset by disturbances. (Deutsch, pg 186-187)

Deutsch’s model is useful to do a study of the IPTO asa self-managing, and self-organizing system. (1) The study by the NRC, Funding a Revolution offers a quote from the second director of IPTO, to explain the nature of IPTO as a self-managing and self-organizing system. They quote Ivan Sutherland, "Good research comes from the researchers themselves rather than from outside." (2) While the interest of researchers in the subject of their study is an important basis for a successful research program, communication among researchers and the ability to build on each others’ work and to be part of a community providing a stimulating and supportative environment, is similarly, a factor contributing to good research. It is not merely the individual researcher who must be considered, but also the social and institutional setting and how it affects the research process. Deutsch's feedback model is a system that is part of a constantly changing environment which makes it possible to maintain firm control of the steering in the face of ever changing conditions. This model provides a helpful set of criteria to apply to understand the nature of IPTO as a research institution. An important consideration is whether there are adequate resources to respond to changing external demands. To be able to respond to the need to learn and adapt, there is a need for uncommitted resources. Deutsch writes (Deutsch, pg 96):

Such uncommitted resources need not be idle; what counts is the ease or probability with which they are available for unexpected recommitment[....]We describe the 'learning' of a system as a structural change within that system which causes it to give a different and thus possibly more effective response to a repeated external stimulus.

If learning thus results in internal structural changes followed by changes in external behavior, the 'learning capacity' of a system is related to the amount and kinds of its uncommitted resources.

A question for another paper will be whether IPTO provided the flexibility to support the changing needs and requirements of the external environment. Surprisingly, Deutsch’s model lacks any role for new tools and new means of communication to help a system adjust to a changing environment. It lacks any consideration of whether new tools or other technical inventions can contribute to the ability of a complex system to adapt or learn a more effective behavior. Licklider’s experience at IPTO and the subsequent development of IPTO demonstrate just how important new tools and means of communication are to a system to be able to adapt to a changing environment. Not only are uncommitted resources needed, but also new forms of resources or new means of using those resources already in existence.

--------------------------- IV - CONCEPTUAL TOOLS AND MATERIAL TOOLS

"You see, the fantastic thing is that in 1856...Wallace...wrote to Darwin...’Look, natural selection is just like a steam engine with a governor.’ The first cybernetic model. But he only thought he

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had an illustration, he didn't think he'd really said probably the most powerful thing that'd been said in the nineteenth century.”

Gregory Bateson in "A Conversation with Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead: For God's Sake Margaret" by Stewart Brand in News that Stayed News, edited by Art Kleiner and Stewart Brand, 1986, p. 32.

In an interview in 1988, J.C.R. Licklider describes some of the intellectual ferment that developed after WWII among scientific and social science researchers:

Licklider: Well, there was tremendous intellectual ferment in Cambridge after World War II. Norbert Wiener ran a weekly circle of 40 or 50 people who got together. They would gather together and talk for a couple of hours. I was a faithful adherent to that. When I was at Harvard, I came down here and audited Wiener's...series in.... Then there was a faculty group at MIT that got together and talked about cybernetics and stuff like that. I was always hanging onto that. Some of it was hard for psychologists to understand. But Walter Rosenblith was understanding and he did a lot of explaining to me....Routinely we'd talk about it on the way down in the car, and then listen to this stuff. Then on the way back, Walter would more or less explain it to me....

Interview with J.C.R. Licklider, Charles Babbage Institute, 1988, pg. 9

Licklider's account of this early post WWII intellectual ferment is supported an account of this period by the anthropologist Margaret Mead and her husband, the anthropologist and psychologist, Gregory Bateson, in a conversation with Stewart Brand(News that Stayed News.)

Mead recounts how Bateson corresponded with the mathematical biophysicist Warren McCullough before WWII ended. They agreed that it would be desirable to have a series of discussions on the phenomena they then called “goal-seeking”. When Bateson returned to the US in 1945, he asked Frank Fremont-Smith of the Macy Foundation, "Let's have a Macy Conference on that stuff." At the time the Macy Foundation sponsored conferences on scientific and technical themes.

"At first we called the thing 'feedback,' and the models that we were presented with at that point were the guided missile, target seeking," remember Mead and Bateson.(1) Explaining what a goal-seeking mechanism is, Bateson elaborates: "The missile measures the angle between its direction and the target it's seeking, and uses that measure to correct itself." Mead and Bateson report that they first learned of this phenomena when they read a journal article in the Philosophy of Science in 1943. The article was "Behavior, Purpose and Teleology" by Arturo Rosenbleuth, Norbert Wiener and Julian Bigelow.(2a)

Mead and Bateson credit the mathematician Norbert Wiener for identifying the phenomena and then Arturo Rosenblueth, a medical doctor, with corroborating Wiener’s work in engineering by identifying a similar phenomena in biology. It was the identification of analogous phenomena

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in two different fields that was the stimulus for Wiener to take the phenomena as important and to develop a theoretical framework for it. (2)"Wiener without a biologist wouldn't have done it," asserts Bateson. Mead adds that "Wiener was working on Rosenblueth's stuff." Mead and Bateson recall that another researcher, W. Ross Ashby, wrote an early article on the subject, probably in 1942.

The Macy Foundation cybernetics conferences were planned to continue over a five year period, gathering a cross disciplinary community of researchers as diverse as the mathematician John von Neumann, the linquist Y. Bar-Hillel, and others including Janet Freud, Julian Bigelow, Leonard Savage, Margaret Mead, F. S. Northrun, Don Marquis, and Norbert Wiener. Mead says that McCulloch planned the sessions. JCR Licklider and Claude Shannon were among those invited to make presentations at sessions held by the group.

The discussions focused on research in information theory, complex systems and developments in communication, feedback and control in natural and artificial systems, which they called cybernetics. A particular interest shared among those in the community was the nature of feedback in their diverse fields and the question of how complex systems adapt and learn, and are able to adjust to changing conditions.

Recounting a bit of the history of what developed with the concepts that the Macy conferences identified, Mead relates (3):

(H)e (Norbert Wiener-ed) wrote the book Cybernetics and sort of patented the idea to that extent. And then he went to Russia, and was very well received. The Russians were crazy about this right away -- it fit right into their lives. But one of the big difficulties in Russian psychology is that they have great difficulty learning that anything's reversible. So cybernetics spread all over the Soviet Union very rapidly...whereas what spread here was systems theory instead of cybernetics.

In their conversation with Stuart Brand about why it seemed the ideas spread in the Soviet Union, but not in the U.S. Mead responds that, "Americans like mechanical machines." Bateson adds: "They like tools." Brand questioning why they think this is true asks, "Material tools more than conceptual tools"? Bateson answers, "No, because conceptual tools aren't conceptual tools in America, they're not part of you." (4)

Licklider’s leadership at IPTO, however, demonstrates there were researchers with an interest in both conceptual and experimental ideas. He not only became interested in and studied cybernetics as part of a circle of other interested researchers, but a few years later he explored systems theory in a study for the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Licklider, in an interview, remembers:

Licklider: Oh, yes. We had a project with the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to develop the systems concept.... (T)hen it was an interesting concept. We were trying to figure out what systems meant to the engineering and scientific world. That involved some meetings...[to] which we brought [together] good thinkers in several fields. We wanted a kind of miniature Wiener circle. I do not remember that we really contributed that much to

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that. I don't know what came of it. But we put a lot of hours into trying to do that.

Interview with J.C.R. Licklider, pg 14

As Mead and Bateson note, W. Ross Ashby was one of the early pioneers of the field. He wrote two books that were widely referred to, Introduction to Cybernetics and Design for a Brain. In Design for a Brain, Ashby provides a systematic development of the servo mechanism concepts. Ashby had been Director of Research at the Psychiatric Hospital Briarwood House in Britain. He was interested in trying to create a model for understanding "the origins of the nervous system's unique ability to produce adaptive behavior." (2) Ashby asks questions like: How is it possible for there to be learned behavior? What is the mechanism of the brain's ability to adapt to new situations and a new environment? How does the brain produce adaptive behavior? To answer these questions, he proposes that there are two sets of observations that will need to be reconciled.

The first is that "the physiologists have shown in a variety of ways how closely the brain resembles a machine; in its dependence on chemical reactions, in its dependence on the integrity of anatomical paths and in many other ways. The second observation he makes is that, "psychologists have established beyond doubt that the living organism, whether human or lower, can produce behavior of the type called ‘purposeful’ or ‘intelligent’ or ‘adaptive’."

To reconcile these two observations, Ashby proposes that "a system can be both mechanistic in nature and produce behavior that is adaptive."(3) He is interested in the behavior of living organisms that is not inborn but learned. He is interested in how much of behavior is not predetermined by genes. Among the characteristics of such learned behavior is that behavior changes. Also it usually changes for the better. Ashby asks what kinds of changes occur in the brain in this learning process? Why does behavior usually change for the better?(4) In exploring how to answer these questions, he observes the importance of "the existence of feedback in the relation between the free-living organism and its environment."(5)

He writes (6):

The importance of feedback lies in the fact that systems which possess it have certain properties...which cannot be shown by systems lacking it. Systems with feedback cannot adequately be treated as if they were of one-way action, for the feedback introduces properties which can be explained only by reference to the properties of the particular feedback used.

Also Ashby looks at what produces stability in a statistically varying system. He takes as an example the Watt's governor. Describing its processes, he writes (7):

A steam-engine rotates a pair of weights which, as they are rotated faster, separate more widely by centrifigal action; their separation controls mechanically the position of the

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throttle; and the position of the throttle controls the flow of steam to the engine.

The connections are arranged so that an increase in the speed of the engine causes a decrease in the flow of steam. The result is that if any transient disturbance slows or accelerates the engine, the governor brings the speed back to the usual value. By this return the system demonstrates its stability.

There is a regulatory system functioning in the human and similarly, there are machines where there are such regulatory systems functioning. These systems have certain characteristics in common. He explains (8):

Such systems whose variables affect one another in a circuit possess what the radio-engineer calls 'feedback'; they are also sometimes described as 'servo-mechanisms': They are at least as old as the Watt's governor and may be older.

But only during the last decade has it been realized that the possession of feedback gives a machine potentialities that are not available to a machine lacking it.

The development occurred mainly during the last war, stimulated by the demand for automatic methods of control, of searchlight, anti-aircraft guns, rockets, and torpedoes, and facilitated by the great advances that had occurred in electronics. As a result, a host of new machines appeared which acted with powers of self-adjustment and correction never before achieved.

Ashby then explains how, "The nature, degree, and polarity of the feedback has a decisive effect on the stability or instability of the system." (9) He illustrates (9a):

In the Watt's governor, or in the thermostat, for instance, the correction of a part in reversed position, reversing the polarity of action of one component or the next, may, turn the system from stable to unstable....

An unstable system can become a "runaway". This is when "The least disturbance is magnified by its passage round the circuit so that it is incessantly built up into a larger and larger deviation from the resting state. The phenomenon is identical with that referred to as a ‘vicious circle’."(10)

The concept of a goal-seeking mechanism is important to understand as the basis for stability in dynamic systems. Ashby gives the example of a pendulum returning to "the center" or if "the control setting of a thermostat was alterned, the temperature of the apparatus always followed it, the set temperature being treated as if it were a goal."

Ashby also gives examples of machines with feedback which can pursue a changing goal. He writes (11);

The radar controlled searchlight, for example, uses the

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reflected impulses to alter its direction of aim so as to minimize the angle between its direction of aim and the bearing

of the source of the reflected impulses. So if the aircraft swerves, the searchlight will follow it actively.... He explains "that feedback can be used to correct any deviation" from a standard. Also, he describes how different systems can be joined, but attention must be paid to "their combination of parts and linkages" to determine what is needed for stability. (12)

Ashby proposes that "a form of behavior is adaptive if it maintains the essential variables...within physiological limits." (13)

He points to the forces of the environment which tend to put pressure on a system to change, and that there must be a mechanism internally to maintain certain essential limits, if there is to be stability in the system. (14)

"The possession of a mechanism which stabilizes the essential variables is therefore an advantage: against moderate disturbances it may be life-saving even if it essentially fails at some severe disturbances. It promotes, but does not guarantee survival.

Given this basis for stability, Ashby is able to explore what he calls, "A most impressive characteristic of living organisms...their ability, their tendency to change." (15)

It is this twofold nature of a system that allows for change. "A good thermostat reacts vigorously to a small change of temperature, and the vigorous activity of some of its variables keeps the others within narrow limits. The point of view taken here," he writes, "is that the constancy of the essential variables is fundamentally important and that the activity of the other variables is important only in so far as it contributes to this end." (16)

The regulating function in a servo mechanisms is the function that makes possible learning and adaptation to changed circumstances. Ashby is focusing on the mechanisms of learning and adaptation. This requires looking at and considering the regulatory functions that make it possible for a system to maintain a stability in the presence of new or changing conditions. Understanding the feedback mechanisms and how they function helps to understand their role in the functioning of an effective regulatory system. Similarly, an effective feedback structure is a basis for a stable dynamic steering or self governing process.

Surprisingly , however, the models explored by Deutsch or Ashby do not investigate the role that tools or other forms of technology, such as new means of communication, can play in the ability of an organism to adapt successfully to a new environment. Licklider, however, extended the work done by those studying feedback, adaption and learning to include the role that tools or other forms of technology can play in learning and adaptation.

JCR Licklider came from a community of researchers studying conceptual models for feedback, learning and adaption. He became head of

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a research office in government to support the creation of new forms of tools and technological partners for the human. A study of this transition promises to yield important insights about the nature of the ability of the human to adapt and learn and the role that tools and new means of communication can play in making it possible to adapt to new environmental conditions. This study will also explore the impact of Licklider’s experience and study on the creation of the research institution to support the development of these new tools and means of communication, and of the research community that would bring them into existence.

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V - A PSYCHOLOGIST BEGINS THE INFORMATION PROCESSING TECHNIQUES OFFICEAT ARPA "Information processing...will one day be the field of a basic and important science." JCR Licklider, "Management and the Future of the Computer" ed. Martin Greenberger, MIT Press, 1962 In 1961 Jack Ruina, who is referred to as the first scientist to head ARPA, invited JCR Licklider to begin what would become the new Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO). Ruina was inviting a psychologist, a researcher in neurophysiology to head a research office that would develop new computer technology. Why, one might ask, would such a research challenge be put into the hands of a scientist from what would appear on the surface to be a different field? To understand this anomaly, it is helpful to understand the problem that Licklider was brought to ARPA to solve. This problem had to do with the fact that humans were being required to use computers in ways that were difficult. The new office at ARPA was intended to make it possible for humans to be able to meet the challenge. Licklider was invited to create an office at ARPA for research in information processing techniques because ARPA was interested in the uses of the computer rather than in putting the hardware as primary. Licklider joined ARPA in 1962. Also in 1962 there was a computer science conference, the Spring Joint Computer Conference, where Licklider and others gave papers on the topic of human-computer communication. Another speaker at this conference, Burton Wolin presented how problems in the manual air-defense system had become serious as humans, who were the central components, were not able to adequately cope with the needs of this system. This led to an interest in determining if computers could help. Wolin describes a study by Chapman and others. They described how the system was dependent upon humans for a number of "significant operations. They discriminated, classified, and calculated. They figured out what the situation was and what to do about it." (1)

Such a manual air-defense system was a system where humans were not able to meet the demands of the complex situation. The response was to modify the system. At first, a special purpose computer to support the central functions of the system was added. Then a general purpose

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computer was introduced into the system to aid in the general system functions.

Explaining the nature of the problem, Wolin writes (2): The supplementing or replacing of men by computers has been forced upon us so fast that occasionally some unease is felt about the whole process. In many ways we were neither ready, or prepared for this development. Wolin outlines how the tendency was to reject utilizing humans and instead to try to build machines that could do the job. He writes (3): Some system designers have decided that the best way to deal with the man's limitations or what man cannot do is to eliminate him insofar as possible from a system. They attempt to design completely automatic functions to be performed wholly by the computer. To the extent that any such attempt fails, which sometimes happens, man is used as backup: The function becomes semi-automatic. It is frequently found, however, that men can't help. To the extent that the automatic function fails, the semi-automatic function also fails. This failure of men to remedy the problem reinforces the attitude which such designers started with -- that men are no darned good. This is the wrong conclusion. Where other system designers have started out to design semi- automatic functions, and have treated men with the same care that they would any component such semi-automatic functions have proven highly successful.

In such complex systems the challenge is to understand the nature of the different components of the system and to provide adequately for each of them. This also requires working within the constraints of the complex system. Wolin writes: If one remembers that we are discussing man-computer systems which operate in real-time with high data loads upon complex problems one other comment is in order. The designers of a function frequently find that they have a choice as to the set of operations to use to fulfill a function. At least they have an apparent choice. However, the particular characteristics of the computer with which they work almost inevitably reduce the choices actually available. A general-purpose computer is general purpose in much the same way a man is general purpose: Given enough time, it can perform a function more or less well. Wolin identifies the areas that require further research support: Having seen men working alone fail and succeed, and men and computers together both fail and succeed, it seemed reasonable to assume that not enough was known about either men or computers or their interaction with one another. One way of finding out more is to do research.

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Thus the problem that Ruina was faced with, the problem of supporting the ability of humans to use computers in an effective way, was a problem requiring research attention. These aspects included research about computers and especially research about humans and computers interacting with each other. "How is one to be able to study a large complex human-computer system?" This is the problem that Wolin poses. At the same conference researchers Licklider and Clark propose a process to approach this problem. In their article "On-Line Man-Computer Communication", they identify the need for increased communication as the essence of the problem. The form of communication in this instance is on-line human-computer communication. And this area will require development before "men and computers can work together effectively in formulative thinking and intuitive problem solving." (4) Their paper explores the problem of human-computer communication. They write that(5): On-line communication between men and computers has been greatly impeded during the whole of the short active history of digital computing by the economic factor. Because computers were so expensive there was pressure to make use of their speed. Since men think slowly," write Licklider and Clark, "the pressure has tended to preclude expensive on-line interaction between men and large-scale computers. They also observe that smaller, more inexpensive computers limit input/output facilities and so humans have been faced with inadequate computing access. They describe the problems that developed with critical military systems like SAGE. Here the need for human-computer interaction was evident. "However," they write, “the SAGE System, the pioneer among computerized military systems, is ‘computer-centered’ -- less so in operation then in initial design, but still clearly computer-centered and that fact has had a strong influence upon men-computer interaction in military contexts. The computers and their programs have tended to dominate and control the patterns of activity. The scope of human initiative has not been great. Men have been assigned tasks that proved difficult to automate more often than tasks at which they are particularly adept." (6) They point to newly developing trends that have an impact on on-line human-computer interaction. The first of these is the falling price of computers so that humans can begin to conceive of the possibility of "being able to think in real time with a medium scale computer." Second, a new form of computer organization called time-sharing was being developed where several or many users could share the cost of a computer and so have better and more economical access. But thirdly, they write (7):

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More and more people are sensing the importance of the kinds of thinking and problem solving that a truly symbiotic man-computer partnership might accomplish. Examples they give include military officers, mathematicians, programmers and those with educational applications. "The foregoing considerations," they write, "suggest that man-computer communication will be an active field during the next few years and that efforts to facilitate productive interacting between men and computers will receive wide appreciation." (8) Next they list 10 functions that they propose are essential for creative intellectual work. These functions include those performed best by a computer and those by a human. The functions that humans excel in are(9):

a. To select goals and criteria -- human;

b. To formulate questions and hypotheses -- human;

c. To select approaches -- human;

d. To detect relevance -- human; e. To recognize patterns and objects -- human; f. To handle unforeseen and low probability exigencies -- human;

The functions both humans and computers excel in are:

g. To store large quantities of information -- human and computer; with high precision -- computer;

h. To retrieve information rapidly -- human and computer; with high precision -- computer;

The functions that computers excel in are:

i. To calculate rapidly and accurately -- computer;

j. To build up progressively a repertoire of procedures without suffering loss due to interference or lack of use -- computer

These operations, however, are not carried out separately, but are often intimately interrelated. The authors reject the model they call the dry cleaner model for computer use: "in by ten, out by five." (10) They explain that this model is "inadequate for creative man-computer thinking" (11) Instead they propose that "a tight on-line coupling between human brains and electronic computers is required."(12) "We must," they add, "amalgamate the predominantly human

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capabilities and the predominantly computer capabilities to create an integrated system for goal-oriented on-line-inventive information processing." (13) Their interest in goal oriented activities points back to the concepts raised in the article “Behavior, Purpose and Teleology” by Rosenbleuth, Wiener, and Bigelow. And though they don't expect that the then state of affairs would continue for long, and "not asserting any essential discontinuity between the domains of human and machine information processing," they explain that (14) At present...we think that man and computer complement each Other, that intellectual power of an effective man-computer symbiosis will far exceed that of either component alone. They identify several areas for the improvement of computer capability and describe research efforts in those areas.(15) The main problems to be solved to bring man-computer symbiosis were thought to be human limitations, but "when explored more carefully" they were revealed to be problems where "their difficulty seems due more to limitations of technology than to limitations of intelligence." (16) "What we would want to achieve, at least as a sub-goal," they explain, “is a mechanism that will couple man to computer as closely as man is now coupled to man in good multidisciplinary scientific or engineering teams." (17) Listing five immediate problems that they propose need attention, they include the creation of a five person small scale prototype of a time-sharing system, an electronic input-output surface where computer and user can display, communicate, and correlate symbolic and pictorial information, a computer programming system to make possible "real" time contingent selection and shaping of information processing procedures and the development of systems for storage and retrieval of vast quantities of information "required to support, simultaneously at several user stations, creative thinking in various areas of investigation.” (18) The fifth task they propose is perhaps the most interesting. This task is (19): "Solve the problem of human cooperation in the development of large program systems. It appears that the development of effective human cooperative and the development of man- computer symbiosis are 'chicken-and-egg' problems. It will take unusual human teamwork to set up a truly workable man- computer partnership and it will take man-computer partnerships to engender and facilitate the human cooperation. For that reason, the main tasks of the first time-sharing computer system with many remote stations may well be in the areas of language and procedure development. They hope that the areas they have listed "will probably be adequate to test the premise that man-computer symbiosis will be able to achieve intellectual results beyond the range of men alone or of computers programmed and operated in conventional ways." (20)

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The problem of visualizing the operation of computer programs is one of the areas of needed research. They write(21): The covertness of the operation of the programs of electronic computers makes it difficult for us to develop... the same direct perpetual kind of comprehension that most of us have of familiar mechanisms, the moving parts of which we can see and touch. The great speed with which the programs run adds to the difficulty of course, but we are in the habit of solving the speed problem -- for example, through slow motion.... Referring to lessons from research about the brain, they write (22):

In the case of the human brain for example, a neurophysiologist may try to construct a model of an internal process on the basis of waveforms recorded from 10 or 100 of the million or billion neurons involved, plus microscopic inspection of several slices of the tissue prepared in such a way as to render visible one or another feature of its architecture.

They add (22a): "Our approach to computers is comparable: When trouble arises and the results do not turn out as we expect them to, we may try to figure out what is going on by examining with the aid of a typewriter control program the contents of supposedly critical registers, one register at a time, even though we cannot hope to look at more than a hundred of the thousands or tens of thousands of registers involved. Alternatively, we may ask for a printout of the contents of many registers at some particular point in the running of the program, hoping to reconstruct the dynamic pattern of events from the static view provided by the printout. Further they explain the difference between the human and the computer (23): Human introspection is a useful procedure despite its severe shortcomings. How much more useful it would be if those shortcomings were overcome -- if all the processes of the brain were accessible to the reporting mechanism; if the reporting mechanism could describe all the aspects of those processes; if the reports were detailed and accurate; if introspecting did not interfere with the process under examination. This thought leads immediately to the idea of a computer analogy to, or improvement upon, human introspection. Clearly, computer introspection can be freed of all the shortcomings mentioned, except the last, and the last one can be turned to advantage. Displaying its own internal processes will of course interfere with the computer's execution of its substantive program, but only by appropriating memory space and time. Often, there is memory space to spare and programs normally run too fast for the

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operator to follow them perceptually. The conclusion, therefore, is that it might be interesting to experiment with programs that display various aspects of the internal operation of the running computer. Just as Licklider was interested in knowing the inner workings of the brain, so he and Clark recognized the benefit of knowing the inner workings of the computer. Licklider, who as an accomplished researcher understood the goals of brain research, could apply this understanding to his leadership at IPTO.

Thus when Licklider began at IPTO, he brought his experience coupling the study of information processing in the brain and in the computer. And his objective was to provide for the coupling of the general purpose human information processing system with the general purpose computer information processing system. What is the significance of a proposal for such a coupling? Licklider and Clark say that their objective is "to amalgamate the predominantly human capability and the predominantly computer capability to create an integrated system for goal-oriented online inventive information processing.” To understand such words as "goal-oriented", "inventive information processing" "on-line" and what meaning they carried during this period, words which were carefully chosen, it will be helpful to look back at another article written during this time frame, an article by JCR Licklider written in 1960.

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Section VI -Creating the Landmark Paper: "Man-Computer Symbiosis" In the Spring and Summer of 1957, Licklider, supported by a grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, undertook a time-and-motion study analyzing the mental work of a researcher doing scientific or technical research. As the subject of his study, and aware of the inadaquacy of his limited sample, he kept records to try to determine the actual mental processes involved in invention. As he explains, the picture this study provided was a surprise. What he found was that 85% of his effort was expended to do the tasks needed to prepare, to get into the position, and only 15% of his time and effort was expended in digesting the information he had gathered, in studying it for the insights or decisions that were the reason for his research. Throughout the period, he writes (1) 'my thinking' time was devoted mainly to activities that were essentially clerical or mechanical: searching, calculating, plotting; transforming, determining the logical or dynamic consequences of a set of assumptions or hypotheses, preparing the way for a decision or insight. His observation was that even his scientific work was limited to too great an extent by "clerical feasibility" rather than "intellectual capability." His conclusion from this limited experiment was that most

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of the time of a technical researcher was taken with information processing "operations that can be performed more effectively by machines than by men". It was desirable, however, that he be able to devote his time to the kind of intellectual activity that was most fruitful for a human. Explaining why there is a need for a partnership between the human and the computer, he writes (2): Severe problems are posed by the fact that these operations have to be performed upon diverse variables and in unforeseen and continually changing sequences. If those problems can be solved in such a way to create a symbiotic relation between man and a fast information-retrieval and data- processing machine, however, it seems evident that the cooperative interaction would greatly improve the thinking process. When Licklider wrote his seminal article, he made sure to note that neither the capability of the computer nor of the human could be treated as fixed, but that both would be improving and changing. Given this precaution, he proceeded to characterize the difference between the human information processing capabilities and the computer information processing capabilities. Describing the different nature of these two species, he writes (3): As has been said in various ways, men are noisy, narrow-band devices, but their nervous systems have very many parallel and simultaneously active channels. Relative to men, computing machines are very fast and very accurate, but are constrained to perform only one or a few elementary operations at a time. Men are flexible, capable of 'programming themselves contingently' on the basis of newly received information. Computing machines are single-minded, constrained by their 'pre-programming.' Men naturally speak redundant languages organized around unitary objects and coherent actions employing 20 to 60 elementary symbols. Computers 'naturally' speak nonredundant languages, usually with only two elementary symbols and no inherent appreciation either of unitary objects or of coherent actions. Licklider notes that there would need to be qualifiers to be more specific about the dissimilar nature of these two species. However, he emphasizes that "the picture of dissimilarity (and therefore potential supplementation) that they present is essentially valid. Computing machines can do readily, well, and rapidly many things that are difficult or impossible for men, and men can do readily and well, though not rapidly, many things that are difficult or impossible for computers. That suggests that a symbiotic cooperation, if successful in integrating the positive characteristics of men and computers would be of great value."(4) But Licklider also notes that "the differences in speed and in language, of course, pose difficulties that must be overcome." (5) His objective was to have "the contributions of human operators and equipment...blend together so completely in many

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operations that it will be difficult to separate them neatly in analysis."(6) He had seen indications that such a collaboration would be possible. (7) Given these crossover-activities, Licklider analyzed the areas in which there would be greater capability on the part of the human or on the part of the computer. Identifying the strong points of the human, at least in the early years of this partnership, Licklider proposes that humans will set the goals and supply the motivation for solving problems or making decisions. He continues, The humans will formulate hypotheses. They will ask questions. They will think of mechanisms, procedures and models. They will remember that such-and-such a person did some possibly relevant work in a topic of interest back in 1947, or at any rate shortly after World War II, and they will have an idea in what journal it might have been published. In general, they will make approximate and fallible, but leading contributions, and they will define criteria and serve as evaluators, judging the contributions of the equipment and guiding the general line of thought. Licklider also notes that "men will handle the very-low-probability situations when such situations actually do arise....Men fill in the gaps, either in the problem solution or in the computer program, when the computer has no mode or routine that is applicable in a particular circumstance." (8) Describing the role for the computer, Licklider writes (9): The information processing equipment, for its part, will convert hypotheses into testable models and then test the models against data (which the human operator may designate roughly and identify as relevant when the computer presents them for his approval). The equipment will answer questions. It will simulate the mechanisms and models, carry out the procedures and display the results to the operator. It will transfer data, plot graphs ("cutting the cake" in whatever way the human operator specifies, or in several alternative ways if the human operator is not sure what he wants.) The equipment will interpolate, extrapolate, and transform. It will convert static equations or logical statements into dynamic models so the human operator can examine their behavior. In general, it will carry out the routinizable, clerical operations that fill the intervals between decisions. In addition, he continues (11): The computer will serve as a statistical-reference, decision-theory, or game-theory machine to make elementary evaluations of suggested courses of action whenever there is enough basis to support a formal statistical analysis.

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Though there will be an effort to utilize computers for pattern matching, diagnosis and recognizing relevance, these skills at the time he is writing, are skills the computer could contribute but which also need human effort. Licklider recognizes that when he is writing this paper, the capabilities he is proposing are needed for data-processing equipment to be a partner to the human are not yet available. The necessary computer programs hadn't yet been written. He observes that (12): There are in fact several hurdles that stand between the nonsymbiotic present and the anticipated symbiotic future. Commenting on these problems, he notes that large scale computers at that time ran too fast and were too expensive to be utilized "for real-time cooperative thinking with one man." In “Man-Computer Symbiosis”, Licklider envisions that by 1970 or 1975 there would be thinking centers. Describing such a center, he writes (12): That will incorporate the functions of present-day libraries together with anticipated advances in information storage and retieval and the symbiotic functions suggested earlier....The picture readily enlarges itself into a network of such centers, connected to one another by wide-band communica- tion lines and to individual users by leased-wire services. In such a system, the speed of the computers would be balanced and the cost of gigantic memories and sophisticated programs would be divided by the number of users. Licklider then describes how there will be a need to maintain printed books in libraries, but to have a computerized means to "expedite the finding, delivery and returning of the books." (13) Also he proposes that there be some indelible memory and some published works stored in memory. And that engineers will need to solve problems related to selection facilities. Discussing the ability to retrieve data by the address where it is stored and also by its pattern, he considers the serious problem which exists due to the dissimilarity between the language spoken by humans and the languages used by computers. Licklider also takes care to distinguish between the kinds of instructions that can be given to intelligent human beings and the kinds of instructions used by computers. He describes how "instructions directed to humans specify goals."(14) They present an incentive or motivation and provide a criterion to make it possible for the human executing the instructions to determine if the task has been accomplished. Instructions given to a computer say the steps to be taken and the sequence to take the steps in. While humans may have an idea of the direction they will take, often they determine the actual path in trying to obtain the goal. The computer instructions would either be attempted in trying to create problem solving or self-organizing problems for the computer or by having the human work along with the computer using pre-programmed routines that the human could call by name. Though hopeful about the future capability of

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computers to be able to adapt their structure to solve new kinds of problems, Licklider notes that there were not yet any significant achievements in this area, but rather efforts to demonstrate in principle what was possible. (15) Licklider explains other desirable improvements in computer technology such as better input output devices and the ability of the human to be able to talk with the computer as a means of communication. (16) The main thrust of Licklider's article, however, is to propose the close coupling between the human and the computer. Each would contribute its best to the cooperative relationship (17): Computers will do the routinizable work that must be done to prepare the way for insights and scientific thinking. (18) Computers will be able to facilitate formulative thinking as they now facilitate the solution of formulated problems. (19) Men would set the goals, formulate the hypotheses, determine the criteria and perform the evaluations. (20) In this relationship, humans and computers will be able "to cooperate in making decisions and controlling complex situations without inflexible dependence on predetermined programs....Preliminary analyses," Licklider proposes, "indicate that the symbiotic partnership will perform intellectual operations much more effectively than men alone can perform them." (21) Licklider offers the example of how the fig tree is pollinated by the insect Blastaphga grossamus. His analogy is of two dissimilar species which are "heavily interdependent as the larva of the insect lives in the ovary of the fig tree and thru it gets its food."(22) He proposes that the "tree cannot reproduce without the insect. The insect cannot eat without the tree." However, together they constitute not only a viable but a productive and thriving partnership. "This cooperative living together in intimate association, or ever closer union of two dissimilar organisms, is called symbiosis," he explains.(23)

His vision for the future is, "The hope...that, in not too many years, human brains and computing machines will be coupled together very tightly, and that the resulting partnership will think as no human brain has ever thought and process data in a way not approached by the information handling machines we know today." (24) At the time Licklider is writing, there were systems where the computer existed to help the human, or where the human would be expected to do what the computer was not able to do. But there were no such systems where the human and computer are coupled as cooperating parts of the same system.

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This new form of complex system, Licklider hoped, would make it possible to solve the problems neither could solve on their own. "One of the main aims of man-computer symbiosis," he writes, "is to bring the computing machine effectively into the formulative parts of technical problems." (25) The example Licklider gives shows that the human capability to formulate a problem and then explore the means to solve it can be greatly facilitated if the human could work in close collaboration with the computer.(26) His other main aim is "to bring computing machines effectively into processes of thinking that must go on in 'real time,' time that moves too fast to permit using computers in conventional ways.” The goal of such a system, Licklider proposes, is, “To think in interaction with a computer in the same way that you think with a colleague whose competence supplements your own will.” He concludes that this will “require much tighter coupling between man and machine than is...possible today."(27) In the notes to his paper, Licklider provides several references to papers that explore the problem of creating a machine with the capability to learn and to adapt that the human exhibits. For example, the paper by G.G. Farley and W.A. Clark, "Simulation of Self-Organizing systems by Digital Computers". (28) Licklider cites such papers in different places in his argument. He is, however, emphasizing the human capacity to adapt and learn as a self organizing system. He writes that while (29): Man-computer symbiosis is probably not the ultimate paradigm for complex technological systems...(I)t seems worthwhile to avoid argument with (other) enthusiasts for artificial intelligence by conceding dominance in the distant future of celebration to machines alone. There will nevertheless be a fairly long interim during which the main intellectual advances will be made by men and computers working together in intimate association. A multidisciplinary study group, examining future research and development problems of the Air Force estimated that it would be 1980 before developments in artificial intelligence make it possible for machines alone to do much thinking or problem solving of significant military problems. That would leave, say, five years to develop man-computer symbiosis and 15 years to use it. The 15 may be 10 or 500, but those years should be intellectually the most creative and exciting in the history of mankind. Section III - Licklider and Modeling the Brain Recognizing Licklider's previous research experience and training in psychology and neurophysiology, his decision to accept the offer to set up an information processing techniques office within ARPA in 1962 is helpful to understand. Why would a researcher who had been trained in

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neurophysiology agree to set up a government institution which would develop information processing computer technology?

To answer this question, it is helpful to look at a meeting held at MIT in 1961 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of MIT. As part of the centennial celebration, there were a series of talks about "Management and the Future of the Computer". At one of the talks, the computer pioneer Alan Perlis gave a presentation on the future role that the computer would play in the university. Remember that in 1961 computers in general were big and expensive and student access, when available, was limited to bringing a stack of punch cards to a computer center and returning hours or days later for a paper printout of the results. In his talk, Perlis described how better computer access would help to make the experience of students more educational.(1) Licklider is a discussant at this session. He agrees with Perlis's desire for students to be able to work directly with a computer and recognizes the important contribution this would make to improving education. Licklider, however, proposes that the most important issue is not the use by students of computers, though the problem of access is an important problem to solve. The real challenge Licklider raises is to ask what role computers in the future will play in the intellectual processes of the university. "The computer," he explains, "will be making possible a kind of intellectual activity and a degree of understanding in important fields, that we cannot possibly accomplish with human brain power alone." (2) Licklider envisions how the computer, after the needed future development, will participate in nearly every intellectual activity that occurs in the university. At the time he is speaking, he notes that "the computer solves preformulated problems maybe of a numerical nature." (3) But looking into the future, Licklider predicts (4): In due course it will be part of the formulation of problems; part of real-time thinking, problem solving, doing of research, conducting of experiments, getting into the literature and finding the references you want.... It will be part of this for I think all the people....As part of its contribution to the intellectual process, the computer will explore consequences of assumptions. It will present complex systems of facts and relations from new points of view, 'cutting the cake another way' in a fraction of a second. It will test proposed plans of action through simulation. It will mediate and facilitate communication among human beings. It will revolutionize their access to information. It will even obtain for them aid and services of other digital computers.

Agreeing with Perlis that the computer will be the handmaiden to scholarly activities in the university, Licklider adds "In not many years[...]it will be regarded less as a handmaiden than as a partner. Through its contribution to formulative thinking which will be, I think, as significant as its solution of formulated problems, the computer will

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help us understand the structure of ideas, the nature of intellectual processes." (5) Despite how hard it is to see clearly into the future given the level of computer development at the time, he writes that, one "can be convinced that 'information processing [....]one day will be the field of a basic and important science."(6) Describing this basic and important new science, Licklider proposes that the university community can't wait for the computer industry to develop the computer needed for the university's general purpose activity. Commercial, industrial or military requirements were not leading to the development of the kind of computer needed in the university and that even if they were, the greater task of creating the software programs needed by those in the university community was an ever more difficult intellectual enterprise which the university itself had to undertake. Licklider sees computer programming "as a way into the structure of ideas and into the understanding of intellectual processes that is just a 'new' thing in this world."(7) Suggesting an answer to the question of why a psychologist would go into the computer field, Licklider explains: "Any psychologist is crazy to keep on working with people if he has access to a computer."(8) Elaborating he explains (8): (T)he man-machine symbiois gives us a much better way than we ever have had before for saying what we are trying to say and then finding out whether it is indeed correct. It is evident that Licklider had become interested in the development of the new science he saw would develop in the future, the science of information processing. He proposes that many fields including "planning, management, communication, mathematics and logic, and perhaps even psychology and philosophy will draw heavily from and contribute to that science." (9) And that "one of the most important present functions of the digital computer in the university should be to catalyze the development of that science." (10) What is this science of information processing that Licklider is referring to?

Robert Fano was part of the interdisciplinary research community that Licklider worked with before going to ARPA, and became head of the first center of excellence that Licklider funded once he was at ARPA. In the eulogy Fano wrote about Licklider, he explores Licklider's growing interest in the intellectual processes that the human computer partnership will help to develop (11) Fano describes the immediate post WWII period as a period of intense interdisciplinary activity in the Cambridge research community centering "on Norbert Wiener's notion of cybernetics, as control and communication in the animal and machine.” Fano writes that, "Lick became an active member of that community and an assiduous participant in the weekly gatherings led by Wiener. He learned the models and analytical tools of the new statistical communication theory propounded by Wiener, which soon began to pay dividends in his research on hearing."(12) Fano describes how in the mid 1950s Licklider had begun a

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"theory-building effort (which) had an experimental component..." He quotes from a 1988 oral history interview where Licklider describes his experience using analog computing equipment "mainly for generating stimuli, collecting responses, analyzing them, and so on. It was having analog computers, and finally learning how to master them,” Licklider says in the interview, “that led me to do modeling on them... I had a big analog computer lab, because I was modeling brain stuff, and I realized that I could not do what I was trying to do with analog computers.”(13) Fano comments (14): This disappointment with analog computers marks the beginning of his love affair with digital computers and modeling tools. Fano describes Licklider's first real encounter with a digital computer, the TX 2 at Lincoln Labs. Clark introduced Licklider to this "powerful transistorized computer with a visual display and light pen that Clark had designed especially for man-machine interaction. No wonder Lick, as an experimental psychologists, fell in love with digital computers," explains Fano. (15) In 1957, Licklider left MIT to go to work at BBN. Fano writes that Lick also spent time learning to program at BBN and collaborating with a group of computer pioneers at the MIT Research Laboratory for Electronics (RLE). Fano writes (16): Psychology and computers happily cohabitated and supported each other in Lick's nimble mind and throughout his five- year stay at BBN. Computer modeling played a major role in his psychology publications, and a psychologist's point of view and interest in the workings of the human mind was evident in his computer publications of that period.

Fano also observes that the digital computer (then the PDP-1) was too slow and the analog computer too inflexible for the research that Licklider was trying to do. Fano suggests that by the time Licklider published his "history making paper" on man-computer symbiosis in March 1960, he had learned a great deal about digital computers. Fano writes (20): This newly acquired knowledge - together with his experience and frustration with the process of model building with currently available computational tools -- led him to the vision for a future intimate collaboration between the man and computer in which each partner would supplement and extend the capability of the other. Fano notes that Licklider became director of the ARPA Office of Information Processing Techniques and Behavioral Sciences in October 1962. But the behavioral sciences part of the office soon ended. Fano headed the most ambitious IPTO program, the Project MAC center of excellence at MIT. "Much of the credit should go to Lick," Fano writes, "for starting the program on the right track with policies from which his successors did not materially depart. It was structured like no other government research program, akin to a single, widely dispersed research laboratory with a clear overall goal, with Lick acting as its director and intellectual leader. He fostered

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close communication and collaboration among all parts of his far-flung laboratory, thereby creating what became known as the 'ARPA community'."(20a) Fano explains how Licklider "further instilled in that community the sense of adventure, dedication, and comraderie that he had learned to value in his research career. He also made sure that the availability of computer resources would not be a limiting factor in the research program, And that plenty of funds would be available for the support of graduate students, whom he correctly regarded as a most important and precious resource." (21) Fano’s eulogy includes a poignant example of how Licklider provided leadership to the IPTO community. Fano writes (22):

One of Lick's suggestions with which I am personally familiar proved to be particularly valuable (he encouraged or persuaded people but never told them what they should do.) He suggested that it would be a good idea to start Project MAC with a summer study with participants from major computer research laboratories. There were many meetings and a lot of discussion during the two-month study with a few memoranda being written. However, no report was ever prepared because there was no significant new conclusion or recommendation to be presented and, moreover, no formal report was expected. The summer study turned out to be a great 'get acquainted party,' where participants got to know one another and had the opportunity to become familiar with two large recently completed time-sharing systems that were available for their individual use....The study certainly helped to get the IPTO program on its way and that was just what Lick had in mind. Fano remembers how Licklider's program at ARPA was the target of criticism of leading people in the computer community. "They believed," Fano explains, "that online use of computers was wasteful, and therefore, that the whole program constituted a waste of government funds. But Lick stood his ground and time proved them wrong. They had missed Lick's main point that computers, although still expensive, could be produced on demand, while creative, competent people could not." (23) Once Project MAC was set up, human computer symbiosis and modeling were important areas that were pursued. Warren Teitelman, a graduate student at Project MAC, wrote his thesis in 1966. In this thesis titled "Pilot: A Step Toward Man-Computer Symbiosis", he explains why human computer symbiosis is important. He writes (24): Symbiosis is a mode of living characterized by intimate or constant association or close union of two dissimilar organisms. The usual implication is that the association is advantageous to one or both. There are many examples of symbiosis in both the botantical and zoological worlds, among these the symbiosis of algae and fungi (called lichens) ants and aphieds, and pilot fish and the shark. But until 1960, the term symbiosis had only been applied in the biological context.

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Teitelman describes how Licklider’s 1960 paper had broken new ground. And that in the years following there was effort put into developing symbiotic systems. "In these systems," Teitelman writes, "the computer performs the routine work -- a surprisingly large percentage of the total amount -- that must be done to prepare for insights and decisions in technical and scientific thinking. Man sets the goals, performs the evaluations, and in general guides the course of the investigation." (25) Teitelman's thesis describes a number of such systems that had been created between the time Licklider wrote his paper and the completion of Teitelman's thesis (1966). "The most significant aspect of the systems described above," Teitelman writes, "is the synergetic action of men and machine that they foster...."(26) Describing the contributions of these systems, Teitelman explains, "What is important is that the overhead involved in switching tasks is eliminated or at least substantially reduced. Thus the user can operate at a greater level of abstraction and thereby concentrate more fully on the problem itself." (27) In the abstract to his thesis, Teitelman writes: PILOT is a programming system...designed to facilitate the development of programs by easing the familar sequence: write some code, run the program, make some changes, write some more code, run the program again, etc. As a program becomes more complex, making these changes becomes harder and harder because the implications of the changes are harder to anticipate. In the PILOT system, the computer plays an active role in this evolutionary process by providing the means whereby changes can be effected immediately, and in ways that seem natural to the user. The user of PILOT feels he is giving advice or making suggestions, to the computer about the operations of his programs and that the system then performs the work necessary. The PILOT system is thus an interface between the user and his program, monitoring both the requests of the user and the operation of his program. Teitelman describes how the PILOT system is designed to make it possible for the "user" to concentrate on the conceptual difficulties in the original problem, rather than on the tasks of editing, rewriting or adding to his programs. He proposes that (28): PILOT is a first step toward computer systems that will help men formulate problems in the same way they now help him to solve them. Experience with it supports the claim that such 'symbiotic systems' allow the programmer to attack and solve difficult problems. A few years later, in 1968, a reseacher, Robert Kahn, was working at BBN to develop the design for the ARPANET. He and

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Teileman created a simulation program to model the performance of the network. They presented the program in 1969 at a Princeton Symposium on Information Systems. The graphic network simulation ran on a KA-10 computer at BBN. Describing the program, Kahn writes: Warren and I collaborated on the design (joint) and implementation (all his) of a graphic network simulation program that ran off a KA-10 at BBN. These were the days when model 33 teletypes were all that were typically available, so this was a pretty amazing piece of techology for the time. BBN had build a hybrid processor that allowed external real time devices to connect to the computer, but the addition of a graphics capability to lisp was another essential part of the puzzle. We had this up and running in 1968 and I was using it to analyze network routing algorithms and congestion control schemes with visual real-time graphics output as well as printed output.

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Section VI - The Vision

Licklider's proposal to couple the human and the computer to create a system with the best capabilities of each is an indicator of the visionary environment that he and other researchers were part of during this pre IPTO period. It would seem difficult to understand the creation of the IPTO without having an understanding of the rich research environment that nourished its birth.

Walter Rosenblith, another neuroscientist who worked with Licklider during this period, also believed that the greatest gain would come from being able to have the benefits of both the human and the computer's capabilities.

Rosenblith presented his comments on how the human-computer relationship should be a cooperative relationship at the 1961 conference on the future of the computer at MIT. Elaborating, he explains(29):

My inclination is to substitute coexistence and cooperation for competition. The real challenge then consists in creating a novel, more powerful, self-modifiable, quasi-symbiotic system that will

combine the assets which a long evolution has bestowed upon man with those which man's inventiveness has bestowed and will bestow upon the computers of tomorrow.

I am therefore less tempted to stress what computers can do better than men than to envisage the benefits that we might derive from an intelligent division of labor between man and computer.

Such arrangements are very likely to enhance human capacities in just those areas that are crucial to the functioning of a world whose technology is rapidly evolving.

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Both the industrial revolution, which bore the imprint of the stream engine, and the cybernetic revolution of automation, which is symbolized by the computer, have given rise to difficulties.

These difficulties affect the coupling of man to his devices as well as the relations between men. Both revolutions have also drastically altered man's image of himself.

The promise of the cybernetic era resides in the fact that the new technology may prove capable of providing more than mere substrata for a rational flow of communication and control messages; it is likely that it will furnish some of the needed tools for the development of the sciences of man. We may thus obtain the instrumentalities for the successful management of human wants and institutions, and perhaps even for the self-management of human behavior.

When scientists like Rosenblith and Licklider proposed the coupling of the human and the computer, they were hopeful that the best capability of each would define the relationship.

In looking at this partnership it will be helpful to give some consideration to what these capabilities were understood to be.

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VII - DYNAMIC MODELING AND HUMAN COLLABORATION

Ironically, just the consideration absent in Deutsch's analysis of how humans change and adapt is the reason J.C.R. Licklider changed his research interest from neuroscience research about the human brain to technical research in interactive computing and computer facilitated human-to-human collaboration and networking.

In the article "Dynamic Modeling", Licklider describes why he moved from his interest in brain research to an interest in interactive computing and networking. He explains (1):

My own interest in digital computers and dynamic modeling stemmed directly from frustration with the tools and techniques that were available a few years ago to facilitate thinking about problems of auditory perception.

Licklider's interest in developing the capability of the computer to facilitate dynamic modeling is an important motivation that it will be helpful to consider to understand how he created a computer science research community and articulated the vision that inspired the creation of the Internet.

The capability Licklider was seeking, the capability to foster dynamic modeling, had two parts: The first, Licklider explains, is ofcrucial importance to scientists who are trying to unravel complex phenomenon or processes. The second, is connected to the desire to

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create a cooperative community and thus foster the kind of collaboration and division of labor which makes it possible to solve what would otherwise be impossible or difficult problems.

Describing these two capabilities, Licklider writes (2):

The first of these is a method and a means of feeling one's way into and through a complex problem or process of making trials easy and errors tolerable, of accumulating gains both large and small until a successful representation of even a very complicated dynamic situation has been achieved.

The second [great power] is to facilitate cooperation among members of a research community -- even though the community may be geographically dispersed -- and to provide a way for their individual contributions to interact rapidly and precisely with one another, and, insofar as they are compatible, to fit together into a coherent over-all theory.

Licklider was interested in creating a catalyst for a new science, the science of information processing. This science would be a multidisciplinary science, a science concerned with the structures and mechanisms of information processing in living and machine systems. In his neurological research Licklider studied how speech is generated, how it is perceived and how the circuit through generation and perception is closed. He found that computer simulations could serve as a bridge between the static and essentially mathematical description of the structures he was looking for and the dynamic graphical representation of how an effect on one variable would lead to a change of behavior of another variable. But he found that to go from studying how the cochlea function to research explaining the neural processes underlying the perception of sound, presented an immediate set of problems. After recognizing how muscle movement is in turn activated by messages from the nervous system, Licklider's research ran into difficulty. He needed better tools than were available. Though mathematical models were important, he found the problem with them was that they were static. They did not help to solve the problem he was facing. "For any transformation to be made," he writes, "for any solution to be achieved, information contained in the model must be read out of the state form, and processed in some active processor, such as a mathematician's brain or a computing machine."

Here Licklider has identified two different forms of information processors, the computer and the human brain. To learn something from a mathematical static model, he points to the importance of the mathematician, who is essentially the human processor. Licklider was interested in complex systems where a change of state of one variable could lead to changes of behavior in others. To understand the behavior of complex systems, he had need of a modeling facility that would provide the capability to explore the behavior of complex systems. The tool he decided would be helpful is the dynamic model.

In thinking of examples, Licklider points to previous uses of dynamic models like flying scale models of wind-tunnels, or testing basin models of ships and analogue computer models.

The nature of such models is that it is possible to observe

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changes in behavior just by observing the model rather than needing an interpretation. Thus the computer is doing the processing for the researcher, rather than the whole burden being on the researcher to process an interpretation for what the model reveals. Licklider writes (2a):

The dynamic model can be set into action by one means or another, and when it is active, it does exhibit behavior and does "solve itself" in the sense of exhibiting the consequences that stem from the interplay between its initial or boundary conditions and its initial structure.

Licklider describes how the researcher can manipulate the model in various ways such as (2b):

varying its parameters or its basic structure and observing the effects thus produced, either in order to understand how the behavior stems from the structure or to explore the behavior itself, over a wide range of structures and conditions.

He finds that the value of such a model is that it makes it possible to build complex structures by concentrating on molding one part without worrying that other parts will be distorted.

The program “Sketchpad” created by Ivan Sutherland, as his PhD thesis at MIT, was according to Licklider "the most significant single step in the development of techniques for dynamic modeling worked out on the TX-2 computer.”(2c)

The advance represented by Sketchpad is that it provided a graphics representation on a computer screen of a bridge. By putting a strain on one section of the bridge, one could see the effects on the rest of the structure. "It was immediately clear what circumstances and what characteristics of the structure caused the difficulty using a light pen...," writes Licklider, "Sutherland immediately repaired the bridge system and tested it again. This time it functioned flawlessly."

Not only was Licklider interested in the ability of an individual researcher to create and explore models, he also felt there was an important role modeling could play in fields where the problems being explored were too difficult for any individual researcher. At a talk Licklider gave to those involved with brain research, he emphasized how computer modeling would help to make scientific progress. "The fields with which we are concerned in this symposium are of course, far too broad to be subsumed in any single model created by an individual, too broad to be understood by any single individual."(2d)

He gives as examples the understanding of hearing and vision as the kinds of problems which could be "an undertaking for a research community." He writes:

It is not enough to have techniques that will support interaction among members of the research community with one another and with the models that they create, test, modify, publish and criticize.

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Instead the kinds of interactivity that Licklider is advocating includes the notion that:

Models of subprocesses have to be fitted together to make models of processes. Models cast in diverse forms have to be compared with one another. Models have to be brought into interaction with experimentation, with data reduction, and with the processes of extrapolation and prediction. These considerations pose requirements for systems and techniques that go far beyond the present state of the art, but in the present art there are beginnings that hold out promise for the effective handling of the broader parts of the problem as well as of the focal element, dynamic modeling.

Licklider describes how the time-sharing systems then being developed would make it possible for this desired form of dynamic modeling to be explored collaboratively among research colleagues. In another article "On Psychophysiogical Models", Licklider explains that (3):

The main value, it seems to me, stems from the role of the model as an organizer. The model pulls a variety of facts together into a compact diagram, and it interrelates them, one to another. The model consolidates the experience thus obtained and makes it easy to go into extensions and ramifications without losing one's grasp on the things one has already dealt with.

Why is modeling so important to Licklider? An article he wrote with Robert Taylor in 1968 provides some insight. To Licklider, the ability to do cooperative modeling is at the crux of the ability to communicate. Licklider and Taylor describe the essential nature of communication as something beyond the one way transfer of information that 2 tape recorders can achieve even when they can record what each other plays. Creative, interactive communication requires "a common plastic or moldable medium that can be modeled, a dynamic medium in which premises will flow into consequences....” But most importantly, they emphasize the need for "a common medium that can be contributed to and experimented with by all." (4)

Licklider and Taylor propose that two people who have very different models will not be able to communicate. If there is no common model, there will be no communication. Thinking, they explain, is intimately bound up with modeling. There is a power in the process of cooperative modeling as the on-line environment of the computer is an unmatched and superb environment for demonstrating the power and dynamism of modeling.

They write (5):

By far the most numerous, most sophisticated, and most important models are those that reside in men's minds. In richness, plasticity, facility, and economy, the mental model has no peer, but, in other respects it has

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shortcomings. It will not stand still for careful study. It cannot be made to repeat a run. No one knows just how it works. It serves its owner's hopes more faithfully than it serves reason. It has access only to the information stored in one man's head. It can be observed and manipulated only by one person.

Yet this capacity for modeling of the human has its achilles heel. "Society," Licklider and Taylor write, "rightly distrusts the modeling done by a single mind. Society demands consensus, agreement, at least of a majority. Fundamentally, this amounts to the requirement that individual models be compared and brought into some degree of accord. The requirement is for communication which we now define concisely as ‘cooperative’ modeling--cooperation in the construction, maintainance and use of a model." (6)

To make such cooperative models possible, Licklider and Taylor propose that there is the need for "a plastic or moldable medium that can be modeled, a dynamic medium in which premises will flow into consequences..." But most importantly, they emphasize the need for a "common medium that can be contributed to and experimented with by all." They propose that the on-line interactive environment that can be created by the computer is just the kind of environment that can make cooperative modeling or communication possible.

Licklider's conceptual formulation of how the human and computer can collaborate to facilitate accomplishments that neither can achieve on their own becomes the basis for fostering computer facilitated communication among users. Computers provide the plastic moldable environment to facilitate cooperative modeling. Licklider portrays this second goal as the stage to be achieved based on the successful attainment of human computer symbiosis.

A model of the kind of intellectual collaborative environment Licklider is working toward is explored in the 1965 article "The On-Line Intellectual Transfer System at M.I.T. in 1975."(7) Looking ten years into the future, the authors describe the nature of the on-line community they hope will develop. The community would have two aspects: 1) facilitating human-computer interaction and 2) fostering cooperation among users.

In this future, the computer will become a crucial tool in any organization and the algorithmic capability of computers will be intermingled with the heuristic capability of humans creating intellectual partnerships (2):

In short, it is now evident that much of the creative intellectual process involves moment-by-moment interplay between heuristic guidance and execution of procedures, between what men do best and what computers do best. Because most achievements are the result of the contributions of many, and because there is a need for communication to make it possible to connect these contributions, the envisioned human-computer system would speed up scientific cooperation and achievement. They write:

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Because communication among men is fallible, and because heretofore we did not have effective ways of expressing complex ideas unambiguously -- and recalling them, testing them, transferring them and converting them from a static record into observable dynamic behavior -- the accumulation of correlatable contributions was opposed by continual erosion; and the melding of contributions was hampered by divergences of convention and format that kept one man's ideas from meshing with another's. The prospect is that when several or many people work within the context of an on-line interactive community computer network, the superior facilities of the network for expressing ideas, preserving facts, modeling processes and bringing two or more people together in close interaction with the same information and the same behavior -- those superior facilities will so foster the growth and integration of knowledge that the incidence of major achievements will be markedly increased...we see in those communities (most clearly, of course, in the one at MIT, for it is the oldest and we had the closest view of it) an important part of the solution to the ever-more-pressing problem of timely and effective transfer of information.

The authors viewed the ideas that develop in this cooperative on-line community network fundamental for information transfer networks of the future. The community of users, they explain, create something that individuals cannot create on their own. Elaborating, they describe what is created as (3):

a broad comprehensive and continually expanding system of information and information-processing services that is at the hunt and peck of any member of the community of users, either for employment "as is" or for modification or specialization to his own particular requirements

The goal they set is to create an on-line cooperative community and to immerse each user in this community so that they are encouraged to utilize its resources and to make their contributions. The authors of the article write:

The main purpose is not to achieve economy in the use of a central processor and not to make each user feel that he has the facilities of a powerful computer all to himself. The main purpose is to immerse each user in a cooperative computer-based community, i.e. to give each user direct access not just to his own store of information and a programmable information processor, but to the sharable part of the entire community's store of information and to a programmable facilitator of communication.

How this on-line cooperative intellectual community did develop and was nourished by an institutional form, the IPTO, and in turn nourished the creation and then the development of a network that spread around the world, the Internet, will be detailed in subsequent articles.

In his eulogy for Licklider who died in 1990, Fano, describing the success of IPTO, writes:

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"[M]uch of the credit [for IPTO] should go to Licklider....it was structured like no other government research program..."

Licklider's legacy is a very rich legacy, one that provides a scientific and technical vision for continuing the development of the Internet as an intellectual public resource. The many articles he wrote in a wide ranging number of publications also provide a roadmap for continuing the vision he brought to the IPTO and the program he established for the implementation of this vision.

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IX - CONCLUSION

A self-steering mechanism needs a goal, whether it be a temporary or long term goal. Licklider's many technical papers help to detail the goal that gave direction to the creation and development of IPTO.

Licklider describes his goal as fostering collaboration among researchers and developing the technology that will support human-computer partnership. The research community was encouraged to contribute to the design of what the future of the community would be. Describing his efforts to create interactive computing and an interactive community of researchers, Licklider tells an interviewer:

But I had pretty well wrapped up in me all the topics that it would take to put interactive computing together. I deliberately talked about the intergalactic network but deliberately did not try to do anything about netting them together, because it was becoming very difficult just to get them to run. (The time-sharing systems-r) The concept that would say: this is pertinent, this is relevant, and this we can let alone for now; so I would create a network of contracts in which one place might do some subset of things that did not necessarily fit together to make a total system. But if I was going to be successful, I had to have some kind of system here. Maybe have one place interact with another, get these guys together frequently, and have special Computer Society meetings. We would get our gang together, and there would be lots of discussion, and we would stay up late at night, and maybe drink a little alcohol and such. So I thought I had a plan at that level. I could talk about it to people in ARPA. It was easy to have plenty of topics in the outline carried down three or four levels if I found a guy who wanted it that way...So, to come back to your question, it was not a clear vision, as certainly, not that: "We'll plug them all together, and that will be the system"; but, rather, it was a matter of getting a supply of parts and methods and techniques, and different people will put together different systems out of it.

J.C.R. Licklider Interview, 28 October, 1988, Charles Babbage Institute, pg 28-29

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In response to another question from one of the interviewers, Licklider responds: Licklider: Yes, I think that I found a lot of bright people and got them working in this area, well enough almost to define this area. I got it moving. I think maybe the best thing I did was to pick a successor, Ivan Sutherland, who was surely more brilliant than I and very effective, and who carried it on. I think that the main thing ARPA has had is a series of good people running an office and a fantastic community. I guess that's the word. It was more than just a collection of bright people working in the field. It was a thing that organized itself a little bit into a community, so that there was some competition and some cooperation, and it resulted in the emergence of a field....I think I was a good picker of people....but I was deliberately trying to get the best people who were interestable in this area into it....I would make a strong(er) claim for having gotten good research people.

J.C.R. Licklider Interview, pg 33

Licklider is describing how he opened up channels for communication. He carefully gathered the best researchers he could and encouraged them to work together. These activities set the basis not only for a vision, but also for an organizational form to be created to make it possible to implement the vision. Licklider encouraged the researchers in the community to communicate with each other and with him. Several were involved in the development of on-line interactive time-sharing systems as their research projects. One of Licklider's goals was to create a process for fostering technical and scientific cooperation and communication.

Licklider describes how after he set up contracts with researchers:

(T)here was lots and lots of talk in the…community, as soon as they got some contracts. I think we even told them that the future of this program was very much going to come out of how they suggest things.

J.C.R. Licklider Interview, pg 29

In the paper Licklider wrote in 1968 with Taylor, they describe how when minds interact, new ideas emerge as the outcome. Deutsch writing in the 1960's describes the transmission of information and the varying effect it can have on those who receive it. They process it according to their needs and capabilities. Licklider recognized the power that was possible from the dissemination of information and the discussion and interaction with colleagues on topics of common interest.

Once Licklider recognized the new found power that would come from coupling the human and computer information processing capabilities in his 1960 seminal paper on human-computer symbiosis, he worked tirelessly to advocate his vision. He became a disseminator of this vision, demonstrating the power of information to become a force. Though his goal began as encouraging interaction and communication between the human and the computer, he also recognized the need to foster cooperative human activity to create the technical developments that

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were needed for human-computer interaction. Licklider realized that there were problems that could not be solved by individuals. They would require a community effort of the best people who could contribute in order to make progress. He recognized that the technical developments would in turn provide the medium for important new intellectual accomplishments and processes. It is as if he was, in some small way, taking the model he had of the human brain as capable of functioning through internal communication processes, and trying to create a similar goal of a community of researchers using on-line communication to facilitate cooperative communication processes.

Since Licklider was interested in the growing understanding of intellectual processes, he saw the university as a place where the general purpose computer and networking systems could be developed and where the programs for them could be created. Also he foresaw the development of an interdisciplinary science a science of information processing that would include researchers from diverse fields including mathematics, logic, management, psychology, physics and anthropology. What would be the nature of the control structure that could provide the self steering for such a scientific and technical community? By accepting the invitation from ARPA to begin the Information Processing Techniques Office, Licklider was accepting the challenge to create such a control structure. This control structure to begin with, Licklider explains, was the support for communication and interaction among the researchers he supported. Later this control structure would become part of the Intergalactic Network that he envisioned and worked toward. The Intergalactic Network would become the on-line community functioning interactively and cooperatively to solve the important problems of its continuing development. The accomplished researchers he gathered to form the infrastructure for the network he was creating would be expected to share their research with each other, and to participate in providing input into the creation of IPTO. They also were to form research centers at their university or other contractor sites where faculty and students would be encouraged to develop research in human-computer interaction. How this control structure evolved as IPTO evolved is a subject for further investigation as this study of IPTO develops. But central to the development of IPTO were the processes of communication among the researchers and their communities at the centers of excellence that grew and expanded and the communication among them as their Intergalactic network developed. And as the on-line community and resources developed, this became a growing part of the development of IPTO.

An area of investigation of Licklider's research was the nature of intellectual processes. In his research he encouraged the interaction between researchers to create computer-human interaction and computer facilitated human to human collaboration and cooperation. How these developments will provide a foundation and catalyst for the creation of an information processing science is not yet understood. Licklider endeavored to map onto the on-line world the most constructive human intellectual processes, the processes of collaboration and cooperation. He encouraged and supported communication via an on-line community.The progress made in this endeavor is a tribute both to the community that Licklider came from and to the on-line community that his efforts helped to give birth to and to nurture. The IPTO provided an organizational form to promote this challenging goal. It is a tribute to Licklider and the research communities he was connected with that this goal could find a manifestation in an actual organizational form, in an

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office that was part of the U.S. government. It is also a demonstration of the power of communication and information. Researchers were supported to explore the most challenging social goals, such as a goal of fostering collaborative research efforts, by a research director whose research intuitions were educated by an understanding of the amazing capacity of the human brain. From these conditions an important organizational form developed. These are but beginning lessons that must be learned to be able to build on the experience of ARPA's Information Processing Techniques Office.

(Footnotes will be available in the next draft)

Draft 1.001 March 19, 2001

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